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THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES Bill will be brought before cabinet for government approval later, with the aim of enacting it before the Dáil summer recess.

The long-awaited bill was first proposed by senator Frances Black in 2018 and would ban trade from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Foreign affairs minister Helen McEntee will later seek government approval and aims to meet this summer deadline.

A department spokesperson remarked that Ireland has “continually advocated for a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians”.

However, the spokesperson added that it is “clear from the actions of the Israeli government, both in Gaza and in the West Bank, that they have no intention of reaching a peaceful resolution”.

The spokesperson added that it “remains the government’s preference that collective action would be taken at EU level” and that McEntee is “continuing to actively pursuing this”.

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Israel has built more than 25 kilometers of earthen barriers inside Gaza since the “ceasefire,” according to an analysis by Forensic Architecture—physically dividing Gaza along the line of Israeli control and further corralling Palestinians into less than half of the enclave.

In the more than seven months since Hamas and Israel signed a ceasefire agreement that was supposed to end Israel’s genocidal assault in Gaza and set the stage for a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops, Israel has instead been fortifying military bases in the eastern part of the territory it controls and constructing a physical barrier walling off Palestinians from most of the Gaza Strip, according to the research, which draws on satellite imagery and other data.

As part of the October 2025 deal, Israeli troops withdrew to the “yellow line” that runs roughly parallel to Gaza’s coastline and cuts off large chunks of territory at the northern and southern ends of the enclave, giving Israel control of 53% of the Gaza Strip. Since then, they have encroached further west and now effectively control over 60% of the territory. In January, Drop Site News first published findings by Forensic Architecture that showed Israel had begun constructing berms—large, raised mounds of earth—to create a physical separation between the area it controls and the area the Palestinian population has been forced into.

The latest findings show that the berms have been extended to create a mostly unbroken wall. Much of the berm runs west of the yellow line, going even deeper into Palestinian territory. In places like Jabaliya, the Israeli military has created a “buffer zone” along the yellow line, destroying everything in a 300 meter vicinity and creating an effective no man’s land west of the line.

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Forces belonging to Libyan military leader Khalifa Haftar have arrested a number of members of a Gaza aid convoy in the city of Sirte.

According to a statement published by the Global Sumud Convoy Instagram page, last contact with the activists was made at 3.22pm on Tuesday.

"The detained are civilians from Spain, Poland, the USA, Argentina, Uruguay, Portugal, Tunisia, and Italy - doctors and human rights defenders who volunteered to deliver aid and stand with the Palestinian people," said the statement.

They said the convoy had entered the 5+5 security zone - a contested area established under the Libyan ceasefire agreement signed in October 2020 - to negotiate safe passage to the Gaza Strip.

"They were detained by a security force affiliated with the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) and are still being held by Eastern Libyan authorities (GNS)," they added.

The group urged citizens of the listed countries to contact their embassies and demand their release.

A range of activist-led humanitarian missions have been sent to Gaza since the beginning of the genocide in October 2023, with most being intercepted at sea by Israeli forces.

A number have attempted to travel across land to the crossing at the Egyptian border, though these have also faced numerous legal and security obstacles.

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A senior Iranian official has explicitly denied that Tehran agreed to hand over or relocate its highly enriched uranium stockpiles as part of the pending diplomatic memorandum of understanding with the US. The revelation directly contradicts earlier assumptions surrounding the breakthrough truce announced by Donald Trump.

The sudden diplomatic breakthrough aimed at ending the military standoff in the Persian Gulf has hit a critical roadblock after a senior Iranian official explicitly rejected claims that Tehran has agreed to surrender its domestic stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.

The pushback, according to Reuters, introduces a sharp narrative divide between Washington and Tehran just hours before both administrations are scheduled to formally announce a finalized Memorandum of Understanding to halt the six-week-old war.

According to the high-ranking Iranian government official, the preliminary text hammered out during frantic weekend backchannel negotiations does not encompass any structural restrictions or removal mandates concerning the regime’s nuclear enrichment capabilities. Tehran asserts that the current diplomatic instrument functions strictly as a localized security framework to separate combat forces and restore maritime trade, rather than a comprehensive, permanent non-proliferation treaty.

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The Trump administration has mass-deleted information about prosecutions tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including cases of defendants who assaulted police officers. The removals mark the latest phase of President Trump's effort to rewrite the history of the violent riot.

Justice Department news releases that detailed guilty pleas, jury verdicts and prison sentences abruptly disappeared from government websites last week.

On social media, the Justice Department defended the move, saying, "We are proud to reverse the DOJ's weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ's website of partisan propaganda."

A review by NPR found that the deleted material included information about some of the most serious assaults on law enforcement that occurred that day. NPR maintains the most complete database and visual archive of the Jan. 6 prosecutions.

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Ken Paxton, the Donald Trump-backed Texas attorney general, triumphed over incumbent John Cornyn in the Republican primary runoff for senator. His victory signals that even a scandal-plagued candidate can win over the deep red state with the support of the president.

“After a public service career lasting more than four decades and 18 consecutive campaign wins, tonight we’ve come up short in this primary runoff,” Cornyn said shortly after the race was called. “I’ve always supported the GOP ticket. I intend to do so again this general election.”

The race had wide implications for Trump’s strength heading into November’s midterm elections, where Paxton will now face James Talarico, a Democratic pastor and state legislator whose message of peace and populism has attracted much attention. If he wins, Talarico would become the first Democrat in more than 30 years to win statewide office in Texas.

Midterm elections often serve as a referendum on the sitting president and tend to help the opposing party. This year Democrats are favored to win the House of Representatives, though a supreme court decision that decimated the Voting Rights Act could allow for more Republican-leaning districts and complicate the picture. The race for Senate remains in flux, though candidatessuch as Talarico, Graham Platner in Maine, as well as purple states such as Ohio and Michigan, could upset the Republican lead.

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The implosion of a chemical tank at a Washington packaging plant early on Tuesday morning killed killed at least one person and left at least nine others with injuries including chemical burns, authorities said.

The Longview fire department confirmed one fatality at Nippon Dynawave Packaging in a statement on their social media page. It also confirmed eight employees were injured and one firefighter. There are nine people who are employees of the plant who remain unaccounted for, officials said.

According to the fire department, incident occurred when a tank containing white liquor, a chemical solution, ruptured. According to the state, the plant has a kraft pulp and paper mill and liquid packaging facility, and employs roughly 1,000 employees.

In a joint statement from the fire department, Nippon Dynawave Packaging and local agencies, officials said late on Tuesday morning that there were “fatalities related to the incident”.In a joint statement from the fire department, Nippon Dynawave Packaging and local agencies, officials said late on Tuesday morning that there were “fatalities related to the incident”.

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Members of a storied food co-operative in Brooklyn have voted to boycott about a dozen products from Israel and Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine – capping years of contentious debate over a conflict half a world away that has threatened to rip apart a landmark institution for liberal New Yorkers.

The Park Slope Food Coop vote, which took place Tuesday night during a three-hour virtual meeting attended by about 7,000 of the co-operative’s 17,000 members, follows months of dueling campaigning that one local rabbi opposed to the boycott described as a “proxy war”. The boycott is supposed to impact some brands of tahini, peppers and persimmons as well as other products. Sixty-seven percent of participants voted in favor of the boycott.

What may seem like a trivial squabble of little significance beyond the largely privileged community the co-op serves has become yet another microcosm of the deep rifts over Israel that the war in Gaza has exacerbated.

The pro-boycott faction – led by Park Slope Food Coop Members in Solidarity with Palestine, and endorsed by more than two dozen advocacy groups including several Jewish ones – argued that the boycott is in line with the co-op’s long history of socially conscious shopping, and cited past boycotts of products from apartheid South Africa, and Chile under the Augusto Pinochet regime, as well as of several companies over their anti-labor or environmental practices.

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